Bill Text: HI SB419 | 2010 | Regular Session | Amended
Bill Title: Medicaid Presumptive Eligibility; Long-Term Care
Spectrum: Partisan Bill (Democrat 2-0)
Status: (Introduced - Dead) 2009-05-11 - Carried over to 2010 Regular Session. [SB419 Detail]
Download: Hawaii-2010-SB419-Amended.html
STAND. COM. REP. NO. 81
Honolulu, Hawaii
RE: S.B. No. 419
S.D. 1
Honorable Colleen Hanabusa
President of the Senate
Twenty-Fifth State Legislature
Regular Session of 2009
State of Hawaii
Madam:
Your Committees on Human Services and Health, to which was referred S.B. No. 419 entitled:
"A BILL FOR AN ACT RELATING TO HEALTH,"
beg leave to report as follows:
The purpose of this measure is to allow for the seamless transfer of a Medicaid patient who is eligible for long-term care from an acute care facility to a long-term care bed and avoid the patient's loss of the hard-to-come-by long-term care bed by instituting a policy of presumptive Medicaid eligibility for waitlisted patients.
Testimony in support of this measure was received from the Chamber of Commerce of Hawaii, Hawaii Pacific Health, Hawaii Disability Rights Center, Kaiser Permanente, and the Healthcare Association of Hawaii. The Department of Human Services submitted testimony in opposition to the measure. Copies of written testimony are available for review on the Legislature's website.
Your Committees find that many individuals who are eligible for long-term care are waitlisted due to the shortage of available long-term care beds. Waitlisted patients do not receive services appropriate for their requisite level of care, and patients in need of acute care are denied beds that waitlisted patients continue to occupy. Additionally, hospitals that provide acute care services are financially depleted by waitlisted long-term care patients who occupy acute care beds because acute care hospitals are reimbursed according to the level of service required by patients, not the level of service actually provided.
Your Committees further find that many long-term care facilities require that long-term care patients receive Medicaid eligibility determinations prior to being admitted. Delays in processing applications for Medicaid eligibility further lengthen the amount of time a waitlisted patient must remain in an acute care bed. The implementation of a policy of presumptive eligibility for waitlisted patients would allow for more expedient transfers of waitlisted patients from acute care hospitals to long-term care facilities; make more acute care beds available for patients in need of acute levels of care; and ease the financial burden placed on acute care hospitals.
Your Committees have amended the measure as follows:
(1) Changing the effective date from July 1, 2009, to July 1, 2010;
(2) Providing that the measure shall be repealed on July 1, 2015;
(3) Substituting the correct reference to federal law relating to state plans for federal grants for medical assistance under the Social Security Act; and
(4) Making technical, nonsubstantive amendments for purposes of clarity and style.
As affirmed by the records of votes of the members of your Committees on Human Services and Health that are attached to this report, your Committees are in accord with the intent and purpose of S.B. No. 419, as amended herein, and recommend that it pass Second Reading in the form attached hereto as S.B. No. 419, S.D. 1, and be referred to the Committee on Ways and Means.
Respectfully submitted on behalf of the members of the Committees on Human Services and Health,
|
____________________________ DAVID Y. IGE, Chair |
|
____________________________ SUZANNE CHUN OAKLAND, Chair |
|
|
|
|
